Scientists of Bashkiria make tests for early diagnostics of asthma

author: Rufina Khannanova

The European consortium GABRIEL jointly with the group of scientists from different countries, including the medics from the Institute of biochemistry and genetics under the Ufa Scientific Center in the staff of the Russian Academy of Sciences, held the all-sided genetic investigation of asthma. The scientists discovered 7 genes, causing the development of the disease. Some of these genes take part in the immune response of the human organism to the damage of the respiratory tract’s mucous membrane. Other genes are able to control the healing process of the respiratory tract after the damage. For five years the scientists have held more than half a million of the genetic tests, covering all genes in the human genome.

“Representatives of 25 countries took part in this investigation and every country presented the DNA of people, sick with the bronchial asthma – the chief of the Institute’s genome department Elsa Khusnutdinova says – “Our scientists participated in the investigations directly in the National Genetic Typing Center in Paris. The open genetic variants were determined at more than one third of the children, suffering from asthma, and these genes exerted strong influence upon development of the asthma’s heavy forms”.

“The presence of the pathogenic mutations in the genes doesn’t mean the man will definitely begin to ache” – she says – “The environment can provoke the appearance of the bronchial asthma, so the investigation of the environment’s influence upon people should become the next stage. The genes we’ve discovered for today can be the genes of predisposition not in all regions”.

On the base of the discovered genes the tests for early diagnostics will be worked up, thanks to which one is able to discover the disease already at an early age.